<p>I’m not going to argue these points, but I’d like to correct a few pieces of misinformation that redsrule just stated to ensure that prospective students do not have incorrect information.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>All large lecture hall classes have discussion sections in some form. Every lecture hall class in the hard sciences have labs as well. The only class that I’ve seen with a large class size and without traditional discussion sections was an astronomy course, but the “void” was filled by regularly scheduled evening “viewings” to supplement the course material in addition to the normal lectures. Discussion sections vary from course to course - some courses use it as review, others for readings to supplement course material, others to go over homework, etc., but they’re always there.</p></li>
<li><p>Graduate students do not teach classes by themselves, but do teach discussion sections often. The discussion sections will be going over material the professor has already taught, not new material. There are undergraduate teaching assistants leading discussion sections as well.</p></li>
<li><p>Classes are generally small, and I have hard numbers to back me up on that; 82% of our classes have less than 50 students. 40% of our classes have less than 20 students. This counts all undergraduate classes. The classes I took my first semester had the following class sizes, in declining order: 241 (with a 39 person discussion), 37, 20, 16. You experience lower class sizes as you get farther into your major classes, even in our largest majors. Economics, one of our largest majors, has the following class sizes in their 400s level classes (I’m copying these numbers directly off the class schedule for all classes in Fall 2012 and omitting none):</p></li>
</ol>
<p>41, 41, 12, 17, 44, 41, 37, 39, 32, 15, 28, 39, 39, 42, 22, 33, 34, 3, 13, 3</p>
<p>This is one of our largest majors (and one of the largest majors at almost any university). Still, the class sizes are all below 50 with some considerably lower. The claim that some majors have lecture hall classes until their final year, then, is entirely incorrect.</p>
<p>Let me know if you have any further questions!</p>
<p>~Rob</p>